Keywords
Healthy eating; Peer influence; Obesity
Abstract
Objective: To assess the association between adolescent’s eating behaviour and social acceptance among peers.
Design: Quantitative, survey data were used. Key measures included self-reported details of healthy foods eaten and avoidance of fast foods in the past week, and perceived social acceptance among peers. Multiple imputation was used to maintain the maximum number of cases (N= 9,150) and multivariate regression analysis was employed to evaluate the significance (p<0.05) of associations between the eating measures and social acceptance. Linear and non-linear measures of healthy eating were assessed to capture potential curvilinear associations.
Setting: This study was conducted using data from a representative sample of adolescents (8th graders) across the U.S.
Subjects: Study subjects included all participants in the 8th grade wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative sample of almost 10,000 adolescents.
Results: As adolescents’ eating behaviours become healthier, their perceived social acceptance among peers also increases. There is some evidence, however, of declining social acceptance at very high levels of healthy eating. Results were robust to controlling for BMI, as well as other social, economic and demographic variables.
Conclusion: Past research suggests peer influence is an important correlate of adolescent health behaviours and healthy eating is a key behaviour to understand for reducing adolescent obesity. The results suggest that peers are generally not an obstacle to healthy eating among American adolescents, and may be a positive source of social pressure that could be leveraged to encourage more nutritious eating among adolescents.
Citation
Downey DB and Schmeer K. Healthy Eating and Perceived Social Acceptance among American Adolescents. SM J Fam Med. 2017; 1(2): 1012.